Ultimately, everyone involved wants the same thing — content that works. But whenever we review other people’s work, we bring our needs, assumptions and biases into that conversation. How you navigate those differing starting points will determine whether a writing project succeeds or fails.
My team and I have been doing this for over 20 years, so we’ve learned what can work. There are no silver bullets. There will always be compromises. But there are approaches that will get you closer to clear content, even in the most technical areas.
In Part 1, we talk about what you can do upstream. Here we’ll get into the collaboration itself.
Real-time works
This is number 1 for a reason. If you can get on a call or in a room with an SME, the collaboration will often flow more easily. There’s all the reasons for this that you might expect (it’s easier to build rapport and easier to ask clarifying questions). Here are two others:
- You can co-design the content. At True North, we love collaborative editing techniques like pair writing. We’ve been brought in on deeply challenging projects and seen pair writing transform the dynamic. But even if you don’t have time for a full pair writing session, you can bring that same collaborative enquiry to a simple phone call.
- There’s always a third way. If you’re shooting drafts back and forth via email, it can get territorial: my draft versus your draft. In real-time, a skilled writer will be able to suggest other options that meet the SME’s needs — and the users’.
Appeal to a higher authority
In any collaboration, it’s useful to have a point of reference other than just ‘I’m the expert, listen to me’. Reference points that can help here include the standards or mandates that we talked about in part 1. If you’ve got user research or analytics specific to content, you can bring that in as well. You can refer to broader business goals or their area’s pain points.
What’s important here is having a goal that’s bigger and more important than how either party thinks a specific sentence should be worded.
Plain english is the means not the end
When you do bring in a broader authority, be wary of relying on ‘…because it’s Plain English’ as your main argument. For writers, that may be what they care deeply about. For SMEs, though, the actual clarity of the words will rarely be their biggest concern.
Instead, show how Plain English helps them. Make the SME’s feel that you are their ally. That you care about their goals too, That you’re genuinely there to help the people that they want to serve, rather than just imposing your ideals on them. Do this and they’ll be more responsive.
Put the words in context
Debates on language and word choice happen all the time when we’re getting content cleared. And for good reason. The SME will often be mindful of legislation or policy that prescribes certain words. They may know that the audience is used to particular language.
There are a few approaches you can use here to arrive at a workable solution.
Other content elements
You can use surrounding content. Where SMEs are adamant that a technical expression should be used in a particular place, explore other parts of the content where you can use more accessible language. Some options include:
a) Page titles and other metadata
b) Navigation labels
c) Glossaries
d) Embedded definitions
Layering
You can also layer the information. Sometimes, there will be a version of the words that just has to be published. It might have been already approved at a high-level, or perhaps you’ll burn too much goodwill by insisting on changing it. What you can do here is run with the content that meets the SME’s needs — and also provide a plain english summary. This is a technique known as the bite-snack-meal: give the short version, then a link to the longer version if the user needs it.
This works really well in complex technical areas. Our experience working with economists, scientists and lawyers is that, particularly at senior levels, even people with a lot of experience appreciate a quick digest. They don’t always have time to read the entire document.
What’s worked for you?
These are some of the approaches that we have found work for us. If you have a particular way of doing things that you like and you’ve got some good results from, let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
